Observations of a geek.

New project: drupalauth

Posted Tue, 2011-02-22 14:18 by geekwisdom

I've written an authentication module (drupalauth) for simpleSAMLphp that will authenticate users against a local Drupal site. Drupalauth makes it fairly simple for a small organization to bring up a SAML 2.0 identity provider (IdP). Using Drupal, simpleSAMLphp, and drupalauth it is possible to be up and running in less than an hour.

I'm maintaining a Drupal module (simplesamlphp_auth)

Posted Tue, 2011-02-22 11:13 by geekwisdom

Over the past several months I've been working with various SAML technologies. Since we have a good size group of folks running Drupal I've been using SimpleSAMLphp, a solid PHP-based implementation of SAML.

Personae

Posted Tue, 2011-01-18 14:43 by geekwisdom

A persona can be defined as a social role, a mask that a person presents to the world. In a federated identity environment should a person be allowed to have multiple personas or just one?

Personae Everywhere

Steve the Christian. Steve the son. Steve the brother. Steve the husband. Steve the father. Steve the Software Architect. Steve the martial artist. Steve the missionary. In the real world we have many different facets, personae if you will.

Understand the values that must be preserved

Posted Wed, 2010-11-10 23:20 by geekwisdom

As I reflected on a series of meetings I attended recently a principle seemed to synthesize in my mind. After meeting with senior leaders of a couple of international organizations I was impressed by the importance of understanding, articulating, and coming to consensus on the critical values that must be preserved if the partnership is to be successful.

Control a 3-wire zone valve with a 2-wire thermostat

Posted Wed, 2010-01-20 00:00 by geekwisdom

I always thought heat-only thermostats needed only two wires (red and white), until this week when I decided to switch from my old school round Honeywell T-26 thermostat to digital programmable thermostats. Off to Home Depot to buy some Honeywell RTH2300B Digital Programmable 5-2 Day Thermostats. After installing one I discovered that it called for heat but never shut it off. That's because the thermostats I bought lack support for the third wire (B, blue) on my Honeywell V2008A zone valves, the wire that closes the valve.

Tabletop Onager

Posted Wed, 2009-12-09 17:09 by geekwisdom

A few weeks ago I built a tabletop trebuchet. After playing with it my sons and I decided we needed another machine to hurl our balls back to the trebuchet. Rather than build another trebuchet I decided to build another seige engine. After reviewing the different specimens from the different categories of seige engines (counter weight, tension, and torsion) a torsion powered machine seemed like it would be neat. Since this would be my first torsion machine I decided to build an onager.

Important Solutions Warrant Proper Analysis Prior to Product Evaluation

Posted Wed, 2009-12-02 23:36 by geekwisdom

I can't count the number of times a customer has started a brand new program/project request by asking me to implement a solution instead of solve a problem. Usually it comes in the form of, "Would you install XYZ application for us?" or better yet, "Does our environment support Ruby on Rails?"